


Advent Calendar

by racketghost



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 31 Days of Ineffables, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21685387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost
Summary: ForDrawlight'sAdvent Calendar
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 217
Kudos: 283
Collections: The Strange Mooniverse





	1. Conduction

**Author's Note:**

> These chapters are going to be a bit out of order because I myself am also a bit out of order.
> 
> This one is for the prompt: fire.

The Kingdom of Wessex 

537 AD

There is an angel in front of him and he should be used to this by now.

But he isn’t, not yet, and when he takes a seat next to that angel it is with his hands shoved up on the sides of himself, cupping his ribs, his shoulders hitched high up around his ears.

“So that’s when I told Cynric that I simply couldn’t do it anymore—“

Aziraphale is drunk, or something close to it, the white furs around his shoulders colored red by firelight.

“—I’m _out_. I’m— I’m _finished_ ,” he waves his tankard and the honeyed mead inside of it, gestures at the brazier.

His teeth are straight. Remarkably so. And Crowley runs his tongue along his own sharp ones, jagged ones, crooked ones— aware for the first time of how they must look when he speaks, wonders if they seem like too much, too many, too monstrous.

“I’m telling you, it’s too damp,” Crowley responds in polite conversation, weary at the bone.

“ _Exactly_. Too damp. And this armor is dreadful.”

Aziraphale looks at the index finger on his hand, studying it, mutters something that sounds like, _and too sharp_.

“Not very warm, either, is it? The armor I mean,” Crowley says, trying to suppress the on-going seizing of his muscles, the knocking together of his teeth. He has not felt warm in a very long time— his banks of internal heat depleted by all this fog, this persistent cloud-cover.

But Aziraphale, he has decided, does not need to know this. It would not do for an angel to know that he could be defeated by something as silly as a _chill_.

“You know I hadn’t noticed,” Aziraphale says dreamily, still staring at his finger. He looks up and over to Crowley’s black breastplate sitting in the corner, propped up next to his own. He considers it for a moment, and then turns his gaze to Crowley— sitting there with his black cloak pulled up high around his neck, his long hair dusting over his shoulders.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, his eyes widening, “ _ohh._ ”

He gets up suddenly, begins rummaging through the trunk at the end of his bedroll.

It is a funny thing to Crowley that he even _has_ a trunk. It is not as though he needs it— not as though he is incapable of manifesting anything his fussy little heart desires through sheer angelic will. Like this tent, Crowley thinks, his eyes rolling up to stare at the sealed corners, the airtight top, the curious lack of curling paper edges along his books in this thick and persistent damp. Aziraphale can have whatever he desires, at any time— he just chooses to do things the difficult way. The _human_ way.

Which is perhaps, Crowley thinks, the mead going a bit to his head, why he is such an interesting angel in the first place.

It takes more than a moment, Aziraphale pulling out odd bits of things— clothes and cups and books and writing utensils. There are pieces of what look like a game, tiny carved figures, and then Aziraphale is standing up, something clutched in his hands.

He may have had a bit too much to drink himself because the angel is fuzzy near his edges, moving as if underwater.

“Here,” is the familiar voice, and then a weight over his shoulders.

It’s a blanket, smelling a bit like horsehair but also like vanilla or maybe fresh bread, like sunshine.

Crowley jerks back a bit at the closeness, at the heft of the material.

“Please take it with you,” Aziraphale says, sinking down next to him again, “I have no use for it.”

Crowley eyes him sidelong.

“It smells a bit like horse,” he remarks, trying not to think about whether or not there is blood coloring his cheeks.

“Well yes, it arrived on one so that’s fitting, really.”

Aziraphale takes a long sip, blinks slowly down at the fire.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were cold?” He asks.

“M’not,” Crowley tries to bite around his vibrating molars.

He can see Aziraphale sucking on his incisors, deep in thought.

“It makes sense a bit,” he starts, glancing over at him, “what you were saying in the field today.”

“Oh? And what was that?”

That stubborn round chin looks for all the world like it is trying to stop whatever traitorous words are about to come spilling out of his mouth.

“That we are cancelling each other out.”

“In very damp places,” Crowley adds, ignoring perhaps for the millionth time the strange weathered ache that lies down in his joints whenever the temperature dips into anything that is decidedly _not warm_.

Aziraphale rolls his eyes over to him, studies the nearly painful set of his bones in the chair, the clearly shivering muscles.

“Does the cold hurt you?” He asks softly.

His heart is rather loud in his ears, louder than the wind wailing outside and he tries to push down the pulse in his throat, swallow it, digest it.

“Oh— nh, nah.”

He brushes off the question with an extra bit of perhaps too theatrical facial expressions, shaking his head a bit too hard, ignoring the ache of his spine.

“I— I mean,” Crowley’s voice is startlingly high-pitched and he clears his throat, deepening it, “I just thought it would a good thing for one of us to stay behind. Bit daft that we’re both out here, isn’t it?”

Aziraphale’s eyes look a bit more gray than blue in this light, a bit more glassy than usual.

“I suppose it is,” he says quietly, and Crowley does not miss how his eye-line lingers on the hitched up set of his shoulders, the perpetual bouncing of his knee.

He looks back down into the fire, feeling all at once like he has said too much without saying anything, the angel somehow capable of seeing through to his underneath, to that place he himself doesn’t like to look.

He wishes he had something to hide beneath, cover himself up with— armor that is perhaps not so cold and not so stiff, armor that is less heavy.

Crowley does not look up at the sudden rustling next to him, not even to see Aziraphale moving his wooden stool closer to his. He closes his eyes and lets the heat of the brazier paint across his face, leans a bit into it.

And then there is a shoulder pressing snugly up against his, that blanket that smells like horsehair shared across the twinned spread of their shoulders.

“Body heat,” Aziraphale says, as if that explains away an angel gathering up close to a demon, keeping his cold blood warm.

That point of contact— the press of shoulder to arm to hip to thigh— feels a bit volcanic, a bit geothermal. Like the whole mess of his easily changeable skin has a fault line along that edge and might erupt— tectonic plates shifting, lava bubbling.

He bites down on the meat of his tongue and is grateful at least for those too many teeth in his mouth, the way they prevent at least part of him from vibrating into the ether.

“That’s better,” Aziraphale is saying, and Crowley can smell him as he does— the vanilla, the fresh bread, the sunshine.

He closes his eyes and wants to live there, in that sunbeam.

“It is,” he says, as quietly as he is able, the stiffness in his joints easing.

If the chattering of his teeth stop and the shivering of his muscles do too— the ache in his bones evaporating— he does not particularly notice it. He notices only the absence of _bad_ in the presence of such _good_ , Aziraphale humming softly next to him.

He lets the high heft of his shoulders ease down, his guard too, and thinks for perhaps the first time that he might get used to having this angel in front of him, next to him, _with_ him. Always.


	2. Spoon

London, _now_

The first time Aziraphale had saved him, it had been in Scotland.

He can remember the smell of the fire then, the salt of the harbor. Human skin smells strikingly similar to pork when it is roasted by high heat, when fire dissolves people down to meat.

There were skiffs in the harbor that day, heavy clouds in the sky. They had already burned one of them, a woman in a peasant’s dress, had already taken her horses and most of her sheep, divided them out amongst themselves.

He had not been a stranger to human cruelty. He had watched the crucifixion. But it hadn’t been Crowley on the cross and it wouldn’t be him on that pyre. Not then. Not ever. Not if he could help it.

“What are you thinking about?” Crowley is asking, across cups of coffee, black and sweet.

He has given himself up now to sugar, to sweetness, when he never had before— always taking things black and bitter, trying it on like a new wardrobe, dressing himself up cool.

“Scotland,” Aziraphale says, and slides the milk toward himself.

Crowley takes his coffee black, yes, and sweet, yes. Without milk because, he had realized at some point in their shared history, Crowley can pretend to be a mammal but his body can not.

“What year?” He asks, and straightens his glasses, pushes them up on his nose.

“1590, I believe.”

Crowley stops, looks up, threads his eyebrows together over the sunglasses.

“The witch-trials?”

The silver spoon is heavy in Aziraphale’s hand and he dips it into his coffee, mixes the white into the black.

“Yes,” he says, remembering those locked iron bars beneath that bridge, the bilgeway where they stored him.

“What for?”

Aziraphale lifts the spoon, sucks it in his mouth, does not miss the way Crowley is watching him, the way the air in the room tightens, condenses, _heats_.

He pulls it out of his mouth and looks at it, his unchanging reflection in thehollow of it.

“I paid for you in spoons,” he says, “did you know that?”

“You told me it was silver,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale watches that long throat work as he swallows.

There is something a lot like lust in the air between them, love too. Even over something as simple as cups of coffee, over something as easy as a spoon.

“It was,” Aziraphale says, and puts the spoon down on the table, nesting it into its mirror, “silver spoons.”

“No forks, huh?”

“There may have been a fork or too. Maybe even a butter knife.”

Sterling silver had been the standard for cutlery. Less chemically reactive than other metals. More food taste, less metal.

“You didn’t have to trade all that for me,” Crowley says, sucking at his incisors, “I _am_ fireproof.”

“I don’t think I knew that at the time,” Aziraphale responds, straightening the cutlery on the white tablecloth.

“For the best, really. Can you imagine what would’ve happened had they burnt me and I _survived_ the burning?”

There is a smile that pulls at the corner of his mouth and he gives into it, easier now that the world isn’t ending, easier now with no one watching.

“You would’ve caused quite the stir,” he says, and looks across the span of tablecloth, “would you take them off, darling?”

Crowley looks left, looks right, looks down at that silver spoon. There is no one here and there is no one coming but hiding has been a way of life for him, for _them_ , and old habits are hard to break.

He pulls them off, eyes hidden under those red-gold eyelashes, under the blue-veined paper of his eyelids.

And then he looks up, the full force of them, his eyes there across the cups of coffee, the silver spoons. They are gold, pure gold, and he knows what the scientists say— that gold was synthesized in supernovas, that gold was born in the collision of neutron stars.

The nucleosynthesis of elements comes with the burning of things— the burning of carbon, the burning of oxygen. Ashes compressing under heat to become fuel again, an endless cycle.

He slides his palm across the table, lets Crowley cup his over top, nesting into its mirror.

He had not known it then— when he handed that bag of spoons and forks and maybe even a butter knife over to pay in desperate recompense for the life of one wild-haired demon— what exactly Crowley would mean to him. He knew only that something in his bones, underneath the stuff that made him an angel, would not let flames lick up his legs again, would not let fire consume him for a second time. 

He had traded that chemically unreactive metal for something far more precious that day without realizing it. The stars, yes, that Crowley had helped build, distilled down into his eye-color, carried with him everywhere. Silver for gold. Currency for love. Metals are precious, Aziraphale thinks, only when they are the color of Crowley’s eyes. 


	3. How To Distill a Spirit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt of pine.

New Jersey, 1924

First you start with the grain mash. Corn, barley, honey, wheat. Stir it in that porcelain cook-pot, underneath the stars and the shadows of mangled pine trees, on top of the sugar-sand. Source it from that stretch of farmland just outside the barren’s edge. Heat it. Add the malt. Stir.

The pine doesn’t burn well, he knows— too resinous, too wet. So full of liquid and so full of stickiness. So unpleasant on the inside, pine trees. So resilient though. So persistent.

Let it cool. Add the yeast.

He lights a cigarette under that ocean of night sky, finds the constellations that are mirrored down on his arms, his chest, his cheeks. _Ophiuchus, Serpens, Corona Borealis._

Aziraphale has constellations on him too. Ones Crowley has not named yet. Ones he want to paint up in that night sky. Give _Ophiuchus_ a halo, make him blond.

The chambers of his heart open, close, gasp around the vacancy.

He looks up, exhales the smoke and a bit of the longing too.

Then you take the mix, toss it back and forth between two buckets in equal measure. Slosh it back and forth. Add air. Let it breathe.

Separate it again. Tear those molecules apart. Let them miss each other. Let them burn off the heat of each other when they are together. Let them cool down separately.

Pine trees drip something black out of their cell walls when you burn them fresh. Resin, tar, _pitch_. It gets black all over the bottom of those porcelain cook-pots. Gets black all over the white.

Don’t think about that though. Don’t think about the pitch of his insides splashing up onto the white of Aziraphale’s wings. Just suck on that cigarette, pull smoke into the already black lungs.

He looks up, looks down. The forest floor is a carpet of pine needles and the occasional small orchid. There is wood smoke lilting through the trees. A devil lives here, he knows, a different one than him. 

Let the mixture sit for a while. Not too long though— gin doesn’t need that much time. Gin will happen in the span of a week. Gin will birth itself like genesis in just seven days.

Strain it. Leave behind the solid bits, the ugly bits— present only the beautiful clear liquid of its best self. Don’t let the rest of it come into view— the corn and the barley shells, the bloated bits of wheat.

Decant that clear essence into your distillation jars. You have to. You cannot skip this. The gin now can blind you for good. Don’t look too long at it. Pull the glasses on. Cover your eyes.

Add the botanicals. This is the fun part. Add the pine needles and the juniper berries. Add the cardamom and the orange peel. Add whatever you want, some spice, some longing, some imagining of what his lips feel like.

He waits. He has to. He has to sit here under this night sky in this empty forest, distill the lovely clear liquid into something less volatile, something less dangerous. Give it time. Give it space. Let it trickle up the copper coil. Let it drip down into something that won’t blind. Something that will tilt down the lovely stretch of Aziraphale’s pale throat, dilate those pupils, make him sit on Crowley’s lap.

There’s magic in this jar. Pine needles too. A promise of pitch in their green needles. But you can’t taste the black. Not around the orange peel and the cardamom, not around the alcohol, the honey. The good parts will overlap the bad, cover them up, make them disappear, make them drinkable.

Maybe it will make him drinkable too. In back rooms. On boardwalks. On nights underneath pine trees and familiar constellations. Make him drinkable in daylight, in full view, cover up his black, make this longing disappear.


	4. there is no noise-- only sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt of _caroling_.
> 
> title comes from a quote by the composer John Cage.

London, _now_

Inhale deeply. Fill up the diaphragm.

It is just a series of movements, a series of internal vibrations and controlled air flow. The same as through any other instrument. The same as a flute. The same as a trumpet. Maybe a bagpipe too. Air moving through a pipe. Taking on the shape of it. A human throat, a bit of steel, a tube of brass. They’re all the same. Vehicles through which oxygen can become sound. Can become music. Bend into invisible beauty.

But Crowley is not a human and he has no music in his lungs. There is no beauty in his throat. There’s too much indecision stuck there. Too much self-loathing in the way. The air gets stuck around it. Comes out mangled. Like something soaked in gasoline and then lit on fire.

He is standing in the far back, trying to cover his obvious hair underneath a hat and the up-turned collar of his jacket. Trying to hide amongst the humans standing next to him.

Relax the shoulders, push up with your breath.

He’s never been good at that though.

Aziraphale had told him, _let the sound come through you._ As if that somehow explained things. As if that would somehow enable _any_ sound at all to come out of his lips standing here on this cold sidewalk. As if he isn’t wholly incapable in this moment of breathing let alone singing.

This is unusual for him. He typically cannot shut up.

He opens his mouth but there’s nothing there. No sound and barely a breath in his lungs and certainly no invisible bit of beauty. No music.

Of course Aziraphale can sing. He is an angel. That is one of the ringing prerequisites. All angels sing. Demons do not. Can not. Not any that he knows of, anyway. That is one of the things they ripped from him maybe— on the fall downwards. Tore the music right out of his throat. The capacity for beauty.

He just listens to it now. He does not create it with instruments and he certainly doesn’t _sing_.

But Aziraphale had asked him with his face lit up underneath all those Christmas lights and the green looked particularly fetching across his eyes— like sunlight bouncing off of leaves, like Eden again— so Crowley had said yes, of course he would, yes. Caroling. Fuck it. Let’s go.

It does not help that they are singing religious hymns that leave a faint and tingling burn around the edges of his mouth.

“I think I’m going to head out,” he says breathlessly in Aziraphale’s ear. The troupe of bandied humans moves along to the next door. “Getting a bit cold,” he lies.

“I’ll come with you,” Aziraphale says. And it’s easy. It’s always so easy. Aziraphale is always transparent— like the skin over his eyelids and the skin across his wrist. You can see the blood moving through him, watch the currents of it. There is no trick to it.

“No, stay. You wanted to do this.”

There is guilt settling down into his joints. It is familiar and heavy and he sweats underneath of it.

“I’d rather be with you.”

There is that easy hand in his, leather kid gloves against those cotton novelty ones with the bones printed on the back. A remnant of Halloween. Something leftover. There is a hole in the thumb and he rubs it against the leather.

Inhale deeply. Fill up the diaphragm.

It isn’t far to the bookshop but there’s snow on the street and they take their time moving through it.

“I can’t sing,” he blurts out, somewhere in the middle of a street, somewhere in that long silence. 

“Of course you can,” Aziraphale just says, “I’ve heard you.”

“You most certainly have not.”

There are fake resin Santas in what seem to be every window and Crowley sneers at them, wants to kick them in their plastic beards.

“You sing to me every night,” Aziraphale persists.

“I think I would know if I did such a thing.”

Aziraphale is nonplussed.

“You do,” he says.

They are at the bookshop and Aziraphale is unlocking it like a human, like he carries those keys around for something other than show.

Crowley is against it— on the inside of it— a breathless moment later. His back shuts it. Closes them off from the rest of the world. Locks them inside.

There are lips somewhere along his collarbones, drinking from the sink of them. His head is against the door, leaning back, Aziraphale pressing it there. He opens his eyes and stares at that ceiling, still not used to Aziraphale doing this. Not used to Aziraphale’s mouth on anything other than pastries at the Ritz, on glasses of wine.

Inhale deeply. Fill up the diaphragm.

“You don’t hear it because the blood is rushing in your ears.”

There is sound in the room but he does not know where it is originating from. Aziraphale’s hand on his chest, over his heart. Push in and press lips against jaw. Against the piano-wire tightness that is strung there under the skin. Tune him with a press of teeth.

“But you sing to me every night,” Aziraphale whispers— Crowley can barely hear him under the weight of those hands up by his throat, the other down at his waist, dipping against the hard parts of him, the soft parts too.

There are fingers underneath his clothes, pressing on the buttons of him, the keys. A bit of air in his lungs coming out in some strangled gasp. A series of controlled movements, internal vibrations.

Maybe he can sing. Maybe he’s just an instrument. A flute. A trumpet. Maybe he just needs someone to press his notes and pump air into him. Aziraphale to move the indecision out of his throat. Get it out of the way. 

_Let the sound come through you_ , he thinks. As if he is capable of stopping it. As if he has some control over the noises that Aziraphale pulls up from his chest. As if he can stop Aziraphale from playing him. Pushing air into lungs and out the throat. Don’t worry about what it sounds like. Don’t worry if it sounds like it was soaked in gasoline and lit on fire. At least that will keep the angel warm.

“You are my favorite bit of music,” Aziraphale says, somewhere under his ear. Air moving through a pipe. Through a tube. Bending into a bit of invisible beauty. After enough years of this Crowley might start to believe him. Might start to sing in public too. No matter the sound. No matter how gasoline soaked and no matter how burnt. Some people might like that. Some people like Aziraphale. 

Inhale deeply. Fill up the diaphragm. Bend it into sound.

Maybe hell ripped the music from his throat, he thinks, but maybe Aziraphale might help put it back.


	5. From Scratch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt of _eggnog_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About fifteen seconds of screen time in the last episode was enough to head canon that Crowley is lactose intolerant. Don't ask how my brain works.

London, _now_

“Please don’t drink it,” Aziraphale says.

“But it’s _festive_.”

“I will make you something else.”

“But I want _this_.”

“Then I will make it so that you can have it. Be patient. Just wait.”

And that is how it starts. That is why he is here, in his stockinged feet in his kitchen. That is why he is just now getting home, at half-past eleven, from some speciality grocery store (it is a miracle they had even been open. It is a Sunday. Don’t remind him), with cashews and coconut, cinnamon and turmeric.

Crowley is not a mammal. He is something else. Something other. Aziraphale is too but it miraculously does not preclude him from enjoying human food. From eating ice cream and putting milk in his coffee. From fitting in.

He will make it so that he can have this.

There had been that one time where they had worn each other’s skins and took themselves out to the park. That time that the world didn’t end. Aziraphale had bought him ice cream, _finally_ , and Crowley had not gotten to eat it. 

You are supposed to soak the cashews but he doesn’t have time for that— who does? But they plump on their own anyway. Swell under something more insistent than hot water.

It had been Heaven that time. Yanking Crowley up instead of tossing him down. Aziraphale tries not to think about that.

Then there’s the coconut. The pure white of it. So white it sucks the color out of a room. He uses full fat. The can with the thick measure of cream at the top. The indulgent stuff. The sinful stuff. He deserves it. Crowley likes thick and Crowley likes white. Even if he won’t admit it. Even if he will only wear black.

That goes in too.

Aziraphale had bought himself a popsicle. Had to. It would be all Crowley’s body would allow him to eat. No dairy. Not mammal.

And then there’s the cinnamon, the heat of it, the burn of it. It peppers the air until his eyes water but it is a pleasant kind of heat. A wonderful sort of burn. A sweet one if there ever could be such a thing.

Hell had been terrifying. But he had tried to be brave. Be cool. Be like Crowley. He had to be.

He blends all of that. Blends it until the individual pieces are lost and the lumps are gone and it’s all just one homogenized mass. One singular pale liquid he can pour out onto his stove. Add heat. Add sugar.

He deserves sugar. He deserves sweetness. All of it. Any of it. It doesn’t matter what kind. The recipe is adaptable. It says you can use pure white or maple syrup or coconut sugar. As long as it is sweet and as long as it pleases him. Don’t wait around for him to admit that he likes it though. He won’t, Aziraphale knows. He will never admit that he likes sugar. Add it anyway. He will never admit that he likes kisses on the forehead or love notes left on his windshield. Add them anyway. He will never admit that he needs to be held at night these days, that he likes a hand latched around his chest when he sleeps anymore. Add them anyway. He will only allow himself sweetness when he thinks no one is looking.

So Aziraphale does not look. Be patient with him. Just wait. 

Then add a thread of gold. Turmeric. Just for color. Just to try and fake it to be like the real stuff. The actual stuff. There are no eggs here and there is no milk. But they can pretend to be real. They can play at being human. Tuck themselves in at night to a bed that Aziraphale does not sleep in. Eat food that they do not readily digest. Count minutes on a clock that does not matter.

Aziraphale will make it so that he can have it.

Dust it across the top.

Add a splash of bourbon and try not to think about how it is made. How Crowley used to help make it. What it feels like to be bent over the scorched barrels of it with fingers in unspeakable places. Don’t start sweating. Definitely don’t breathe faster.

Stir. He swallows down that lump in his throat. Keep stirring. Do not let the immense magnitude of history come crashing down. Do not let thousands of years of unanswered touches come crawling up from the floorboards.

He will make it so that he can have it. Be patient. Just wait.

Stir until it thickens. Until everything is combined. Stir until the dust of gold on top colors the pure white of the coconut underneath. Stir until it becomes real.

Decant it into a glass and present it. He watches it tip down a long throat with a Christmas tree winking in the background. Watches the narrow black pupils dilate.

“This is exactly what I wanted,” he says.

“I told you I would make it so that you could have it.”

“I was patient,” Crowley says, “I waited.”

“You were,” Aziraphale says, and kisses that forehead so deserving of sugar, of sweetness, “you did.”


	6. ritual of bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt of _wish_

London, 1941

It’s stupid. He has invented half of these rituals. He knows they won’t come true.

It started as a joke. Pull apart the clavicles of a chicken carcass. Listen to it snap. Make a wish if you get the bigger piece. Call it a wishbone.

What is the most ridiculous idea he can summon up for the humans to ascribe meaning to. What is the most inane.

He shouldn’t be doing this.

But he does. Every time. Every time he passes a dandelion, huffs in air like the big bag wolf and blows those devilish little seeds to the wind, lets them grow in the crevices of sidewalks, muck up people’s lawns.

He does not admit, aloud, _ever_ , that he also thinks about the fluff of Aziraphale’s head from the back while he does it. He does not admit, aloud, _ever_ , that he always wishes for the same thing.

There is an eyelash on Aziraphale’s cheek, in singlular lovely white. It looks like a feather. Like a bit of his wing tucked away in the firmament.

It would be real fucking slick to lean over and swipe it away. Make Aziraphale blow it off his finger. Close your eyes, angel. Make a wish. _Hope it’s about me_.

But he isn’t slick, not even close, not in the way that matters. And when he leans over and into Aziraphale’s personal space, far closer than usual, he is instead rebuffed with a strong hand pressed squarely into his chest. Beneath those clavicles. On top of that wishbone.

“Crowley,” he says, and those eyes up close are somehow more breathless, even in the far-too-yellow lighting of the bookshop’s backroom.

“Sorry,” he mutters, something stuck in his throat, and leans back.

It’s stupid. It started as a joke. He shouldn’t be doing this.

Pull apart the clavicles. Listen to it snap.

He invented throwing coins into wishing wells. Considered the irritating perfection of tying knots in paper straw wrappers and fighting over the larger piece. He had looked at his watch one fine evening and thought the numbers 11:11 looked suitably demonic. Started a movement. What could be better than humans throwing money away? Especially into places where the less fortunate could stick a hand, pull out some cash, maybe get some food.

“Did you want something?”

“Oh,” he is startled by the question. By Aziraphale pointing it out. He thought they would ignore it, like they very often do, “no. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Huff in air like the big bad wolf.

“So I was thinking we could hide them underneath the floorboards, just in case,” he is hovering over that tightly wrapped pallet of interesting and dusty first editions that Crowley had pulled from various libraries all across Europe. The ones that are steadily taking up space in the bookshop. Aziraphale has enough things taking up space here, it seems. He has enough dusty old things, tightly wrapped things. He does not need another.

Crowley shoves his hands into his pocket, hitches up his shoulders.

“Sure,” he says, “floorboards are good.”

You hide things that are secretly important underneath floorboards. You hide things that are precious to you there. You hide important first editions and entire beating hearts.

“It should probably be somewhere beneath a carpet. Somewhere they won’t see the scratch marks.”

Crowley just nods. His fingers feel cold.

“Just point me in a direction,” he says.

There is something like a smile on Aziraphale’s face.

“You know, you really are quite—“

“ _Stop_.”

Pull apart those clavicles. Listen to it snap.

Aziraphale sucks at his teeth, rocks back on his heels a bit. Those eyes roving somewhere up and somewhere down his body.

Crowley wonders if his suit is too tight.

You hide handguns underneath floorboards. You hide secret identities and stashes of pornography. Those bleeding beating hearts.

The carpet is a heavy, woolen thing. It probably could have been rolled up by Aziraphale alone but he lets Crowley help anyway. Lets him feel useful.

“They won’t look for them here, will they?” Aziraphale asks, that eyelash still on his cheek.

“The Nazis?” Crowley says, incredulous, “nah, they’re absolute idiots. Total morons.”

He catches the way Aziraphale worries at his lip, the way he drops the books into their new home beneath the floorboards with something like a caress along their spines.

He knows what it feels like to have those hands on his spine too. Opening his cover. Not quite reading the words. A book in a foreign language.

Crowley inhales, exhales, rubs at his hands and wishes he had his glasses.

Those entire beating, bleeding hearts beneath the floorboards eventually start to ooze, he knows. They seep up through the cracks. They drip out between the bones of the house.

The hours slink by and the books do too, stacked neatly beneath the wooden floor.

“Angel,” he says, tired of looking at that eyelash on his cheek.

It might migrate up and get stuck somewhere terrible. It might turn the whites around those blue eyes red.

“You have a bit— an eyelash,” he reaches a hand toward him, his knuckles, some creation of man bullshit.

“Oh,” Aziraphale brushes at his cheeks, the pink softness of them.

“Here,” he breathes, and closes the distance.

He has touched his face, of course he has, so many times. He can lay out the lines of it beneath his fingers with his eyes closed. He can chart the distance from eyebrow to eyelash from memory, from lips to cheek to chin by heart.

It is not strictly necessary for his hands to cup around his jaw, around his ear. It is not strictly necessary for his thumb to linger there, pick up it’s singular white passenger on the pad of it. It is not strictly necessary to breathe so fucking heavily.

But he does anyway. Without choice. Without meaning to.

He does not have a birthday. He has never had a cake. But if he ever did he knows he would have spent every birthday of the last six-thousand or so wishing for the same thing.

All those dandelions. All those chicken bones. All those evenings at nearly mid-night.

 _Hope it’s about me_.

“Make a wish,” he says, and draws his thumb back between them. A perfect equidistance.

Aziraphale stares at it. Stares at him. And Crowley can see underneath the pale eyelashes the kicking of his heart, the pulse of his desire. He can hear that entire bleeding beating heart underneath the floorboards between them. Can feel the blood pushing up through the cracks. Through the bones of the house.

He blows a puff of warm air across his thumb, across Crowley’s chest behind it.

Keep those clavicles together, _please_. Don’t pull them apart. They are the biggest when they are together, he knows. He has heard enough of snapping.

“Did you make a wish?” He asks.

“I did,” Aziraphale says.

 _Hope it’s about me_.

“Good,” Crowley says, and pulls his hand away, “don’t tell me what it is.”

“Why not?” Aziraphale asks.

“If you do it won’t come true.”

It started as a joke, he thinks.

Don’t reveal what wish has been made. Put it underneath the floorboards instead. Put the entire bleeding beating heart there too. The one underneath those clavicles. The one underneath that wishbone. Hope that this time it isn’t a joke. Wish that this time it comes true.


	7. a box of darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt of _gift_.
> 
> (this is definitely not what Mary Oliver had in mind)

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” -Mary Oliver

London, _now_ (and also _then,_ and also _not yet_ )

There have been boxes of chocolate, a few times, and good bottles of wine. There have been regency snuffboxes of sterling silver, a pocket watch of gold. There had been that bottle of bourbon, _once_ , amber-colored and American. There have been a number of black feathers left behind on a pillow, a pair of glasses left on the ledge of the sink.

But it looks like other things too. Things you can’t pick up. Things that exist for a single heartbeat and between the letters of words. Things that evaporate too quickly, might come back around if you’re lucky.

It looks something like Monday mornings behind a newspaper. The middle finger of both hands the only visible digit from the front. Coffee rings around the sports section because he does not care about it and used the final scores of last night’s game as a condom against watermarks.

Aziraphale will ask him, “one sugar or two?” And Crowley will say _none_ — so Aziraphale will give him three.

It looks something like Tuesday afternoons with a can of spray paint in his hands behind the bleachers at a high school. Gloves with the fingers cut off and chipping black nail polish. Cigarette between those glacial white teeth and a chip on his shoulder. Angry rants about climate change and framing the kids who idle in their cars for graffiti of school property.

He will glue coins to the bleacher seats and Aziraphale will tell him that he’s an old dog— he hasn’t learned any new tricks.

It looks like Wednesdays behind the doors of the bookshop— hung up in the backroom. Like wine with good legs. Like Crowley with better ones. Dark jeans on that sofa that doesn’t know the word _black_.

Aziraphale will say, “jumper on or off?” And Crowley will say _yes_.

It looks like Thursday at dinner time, Aziraphale eating his food and Crowley’s too. Fingers touching between passed glasses of wine and the nudge of a booted foot beneath the table cloth. Heat across his face from more than the _fra diavolo_ shrimp. The ghost of a heavy mouthfeel that has nothing to do with the devil’s food cake.

Crowley will admire his blush and his stuttering imperfections. Say something like, “what’s the matter, angel? Cat got your tongue?” And Aziraphale will swallow and say, “no, dearest. Not cat. _Snake_.”

It looks like Fridays at nearly midnight, after trips to the cinema. Hands locking together in the dark and staying there for the entire two and half hours. Lips leaning in close to ears to whisper rude remarks about the sexual proclivities of the actors on screen.

The moon will hang over them like a marquee. Aziraphale will ask if Crowley liked the movie and Crowley will say something softly, under his breath. Something that sounds a lot like, “no, but I liked sitting next to you.”

It might look like Saturdays at far too early in the morning after Crowley has had too much to drink. It might look like him using the upstairs toilet for a decidedly unpleasant bit of human nature. Aziraphale holding his hair back and counting the constellations of freckles across that pale stretch of neck as the alcohol reappears undigested.

Crowley will lay his head in Aziraphale’s lap afterward and stare up at the ceiling. He will ask something about what it means to be human. Aziraphale will look down on the new freckles that are blooming on his cheeks and think that he doesn’t understand it, not yet, but the longer he knows Crowley the more he thinks he might.

It looks like Sundays, all day, across a spread of black bedsheets. Crowley wrapped around him at the ankle, the knee, the hip. Aziraphale trying to find the cold areas that have congealed overnight in the wrinkles of the sheets, sweating underneath physical exertion and a demon that likes it hot.

Crowley will mumble something about needing sleep, and Aziraphale will push the shock of red hair across his forehead and whisper, “you can do it, love. Just one more. For me.” They will not leave the bedroom until Monday. 

And it will turn out that it looks most of all like Crowley— just Crowley. All of him— with his crisp black clothes and the books he pretends not to read, the chain-smoking and the fast-driving and the moody indecision. His self-hatred and his avoidance of mirrors. His outlandishly reckless personality when it comes to everything but Aziraphale.

He will wear a sweater at Christmas that says, “I am the gift” as a joke, and Aziraphale will tell him in no uncertain terms that he’s right, of course he is, has been all along. For everything. For most things.

It looks like walking into the Bastille and bailing him out. It looks like burning his feet on the grounds of a church. It looks like wearing his skin and stepping into hellfire. Like meeting on top of buses and in cafes and at museums. It looks like being on their own side, this whole time. It looks _a lot_ like six-thousand years of waiting.

It looks like a simple gold band in a simple black box, hidden in a pocket. Waiting for the right moment. Not now. Not quite. Not _yet_.


	8. a count of four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt of _ghosts_
> 
> (it is very late and I am very tired. I'm not sure what this is going to look like in the morning)

Lay out a Ouija board and let it tell you _hello_. Let it tell you what the horror movies know, what the ghost hunters know, what the little girls at 284 Green Street know. (They will tell you there are four).

“It is nearly Christmas Eve,” Aziraphale is saying, unlocking his door. The alcove light above them is flickering and there is something that might be mistletoe tucked into a bit of the bookshop facade.

“We should do something special,” Aziraphale says, and on second glance it is just a bit of evergreen that an enterprising pigeon has stolen from a wreath.

“It is,” Crowley says, and takes a step back anyway, just in case, “we should.” _Not yet. Not quite_.

The bell above the bookshop rings with the weight of a hundred years behind it, the floors creak with the measure of a thousand footsteps.

There is an oil-stain on the carpet by the stairs, a pair of Crowley’s glasses in the register till. (This is the first one. This is the first kind. They call them _residual hauntings_.)

“How shall we celebrate, then?”

Aziraphale is hanging up his coat and Crowley’s too, mirrored opposites on a shared hook.

“We could stay in, watch a film, light a fire—“

These are the echoes of a life lived many times across many centuries. Over and over again. These are the ones that impress themselves into the floorboards of the house (they beat there. They bleed there). They leave that oil-stain on that carpet, the fingerprints in the dust along the bathroom windowsill.

These are the ones that remember what this building smells like dripping with fire. They remind him what is long since gone.

Maybe he is breathing too heavily. Maybe he is giving himself away.

“Oh. _Oh_ —“

What they don’t tell you is that residual hauntings are tied to a place. They exist between the blanket-fibers on a particular bed and within the chipped porcelain of a soaking tub. They occupy the spaces between floorboards and live inside the spinal column of books.

“I’m okay,” he says, and it’s with a bit of a gasp, “that sounds nice.”

Crowley knows something about ghosts, he knows a _lot_ about hauntings.

“I’m sorry— I shouldn’t have—“

“ _Angel_ ,” he says, “I’m fine.”

When he leaves that night he lingers in the doorway with it shut behind him, stares up at that imagined bit of mistletoe. (This is the second one. This is the second kind.)

These are the intelligent hauntings. He knows these too.

These ghosts asks questions, respond to questions, are questions themselves. They hang around the bookshop until far too late— until he is sure he has overstayed his welcome and has enough mind to leave, yes, _no_ , goodbye.

These are the ones that follow him out onto the street when he leaves the bookshop at three in the morning— some perversion of the holy trinity— and instead of heading home walks immediately to the all-night bodega and finds himself at the bottom of a bottle of something nearly undrinkable.

These ghosts follow him home and crawl into bed with him. They remind him what Aziraphale’s hands feel like on his skin as he touches himself. They make for strange bedfellows.

These are the ones that he can hear at night when his flat creaks like a ship missing the sea— the water in the bones of the building pulling out like a tide. A moon without a planet. _You are missing from me._

They will meet up tomorrow and walk around Soho. They will wander in thrift stores and studiously ignore the sex shops. Aziraphale will say something about getting a few bottles of wine and they will make their way down the street like there isn’t an invisible thread tied between their fingers. Something holding both of their hands.

He won’t say it but Crowley will feel it when they pass the clearance aisle in a store and he catches a glimpse of white feathers in a pile on the shelf. He won’t say anything about the ghost that haunts the valves of his heart at something as stupid as novelty angel wings.

He will not say anything about how it haunts the tips of his fingers when Aziraphale is sitting across from him later that afternoon, at lunch, picking at a bit of bread. He will not saying anything about the one that haunts the passage of his throat when he tries to say his name so he just _doesn’t_ anymore— just calls him _angel_ instead.

 _Intelligent hauntings_ will make him save oyster shells and fired bullets. They will make him rescue statues from burning churches and jealously hoard borrowed shirts. They sleep in dark little attics. They cling to him at night when he is alone.

Crowley will drop a glass of wine and it will spill somewhere all over the parquet floor of the back room. He will become unseasonably irritated.

“I just— _fuck_ , I keep _fucking_ up today,” he will say, with enough vitriol that Aziraphale actually raises his eyebrows.

“It’s quite alright,” he will say, and the liquid will vanish with the snapping of a finger, “it’s quite okay.” (This is it. This is the third kind.)

And something about the way he says it— like he’s saying _I forgive you_ — sends Crowley storming out onto the street and swallowing back the heat of frustration that burns in his throat, around the ghost that is still lodged there.

These are the garden variety poltergeists. A German word that Hollywood would have you believe means “noisy ghost” but is actually closer to meaning “racket ghost”. “Rumble ghost”. “Ruckus ghost”. Something loud and out of key. Something recklessly ruthless and violently out of touch. Something that smashes a bottle of bourbon against the wall of his fireplace and doesn’t care when it cuts up his arms.

It’s something that drives too fast and drinks too much and smokes too many cigarettes. It’s something that kicks open doors and has a hot-temper and lies about everything, always, but especially about his own emotions. It’s something that wears black, _only black_ , because it’s the color he imagines his heart to be if you broke open his ribs, ripped it out of his chest.

It’s the thing that scares him when Aziraphale says certain words in certain tones of voice— _it’s over. I forgive you. There is no us_.

It’s something that probably frightens Aziraphale so he tucks it up into the corners of rooms and does not show it to him. It’s something he throws out onto the street and then comes back inside without.

Poltergeists don’t need forgiveness. They just need to burn themselves out and disappear. Exorcise themselves.

“Sorry,” he will say, and swallow down the small ghost that lives in his throat, “just… having a day.”

Aziraphale will smile and not understand, or maybe understand too much, and will pat the bit of sofa next to him.

“That’s fine. As long as you have it with me.”

Crowley will fit somewhere between bookshelf and angel, between armrest and arm. He will exhale the spirit in his throat through any number of controlled breaths and with the help of Aziraphale’s thumb rubbing circles onto the back of his hand.

He will eye-fuck the grooves that Aziraphale’s lips have stamped on the rim of his wine glass and not think about fire, not think about forgiveness. Will think instead of the thing holding both of their hands. Will think instead, _you are not missing from me_.

(This is it. This is the fourth one.)

These are the demonic ones. The inhuman ones. The elemental ones.

These show up at Aziraphale’s doorstep in a crisp black suit and take him out to dinner. These brush lazy fingers through his fluffy white hair and murmur sleepy words of thanks into his ear after too much wine. These haul that angelic white ass out of revolutionary prisons and burning churches. 

These also show up in the scales on his skin one evening when he’s had far too much to drink and is too tired and the hold he has over this skin is shifting away to another one. These show up in the lack of white around his eyes.

Aziraphale will take his hand and maybe his whole body too— sling him in his arms like _Ophiuchus_ at last, tuck him in to his own bed. He will kiss a few of the scales that run oil-black along his neck, his arm, his hand. He will lay down next to him and not sleep— watch instead as Crowley’s skin shifts in any number of beautiful and terrible ways.

He will wake up at some point in the morning when it is still dark out, maybe three A.M.— that perversion of the holy trinity— and find an angel watching him in the dark.

He will say something like, “I hope I didn’t ruin Christmas Eve.”

And Aziraphale will smile and let himself get pulled into a horizontal embrace.

“You didn’t,” he will say, “not at all.”

“Jesus was born in _September_ anyway,” Crowley will mutter into the junction of his neck.

Demonic hauntings have the peculiar habit of stealing religious artifacts. The crucifixes will go missing. The bibles will find themselves gone. You will have misplaced those rosary beads.

Those things are too small though— not enough. There is really only one religious artifact that Crowley is interested in stealing, and it is already in his arms.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Advent Calendar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22157701) by [Liquid_Lyrium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liquid_Lyrium/pseuds/Liquid_Lyrium)




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